With the advent of electronics utilized in building structures, including offices, factories, and homes, the need to mount and accommodate cables for television, data, telephone, and security or sensor devices has increased. In some instances, the cables may be wall mounted or surface mounted, but in general, such mountings are aesthetically unacceptable, and in certain instances, practically undesirable by virtue of damage to such cables by the normal traffic of the buildings, including the movement of furniture, equipment, and the like. Most wall constructions include the use of studs which are nominally of 2".times.4" dimensions over which is applied drywall or paneling to result in a hollow space or volume between the sheet material defining the walls. As can be appreciated, this volume is limited in depth. Traditional practice has been to mount wall boxes or housings to accommodate cable termination to devices, to rough-wire the building while one wall is removed, through the interior wall volume, through apertures made in studs and to leave an excess of cable which may be trimmed during final installation. The practice extends to pulling the cable through the box or housing, clamping the cable to the box and terminating it to a device and then shoving it back into the box. With respect to prior practice, utilizing one or two or even three power cables, such as the so-called "Romex" cable, the ends, as terminated, can be readily, or sometimes with difficulty, fitted into a box by folding and bending, with the excess cable needed to effectively terminate the cable removed prior to termination, reducing the volume of cable which must be stuffed into the box.
With respect to applications wherein far more than two or three cables must be terminated, as for example, in the so-called distribution of television or data cables, which are coaxial in nature, and telephone cables which carry numerous wires in numbers of cables to be terminated, a problem is created. One solution employed in the prior art utilizes a fairly large box or housing of substantial interior volume to accommodate the "head end" and other cables for upstream and downstream distribution of signals through distribution cables.
Patent Application Ser. No. 07,618,766, filed Nov. 27, 1990, and directed to a convenience electrical outlet assembly represents one solution wherein power and signal outlets are combined and employed using a hybrid ribbon cable for an intelligent wiring system for a building. There, a multi-function ribbon cable is attached to a housing which has receptacles into which terminals attached to modules are plugged to effect a termination. A special module is used to accommodate data or communication cables inserted into the housing, which is fitted within a hole in the sheet material of a wall. There also, the numbers of coaxial and telephone cables are relatively limited inputs to a receptacle associated with such device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,695 granted Jul. 12, 1988 and drawn to a local area network interface accomplishes a similar function with respect to telephone cables. There, a wall box is made to accommodate connectors terminated to cable and plugged therein to join modules accommodated by the wall box.
The present invention has as an object the provision of a cable distribution unit and method of installation wherein relatively large numbers of cables can be accommodated in a relatively small volume within the sheet material defining a wall structure of a building. The invention has as a further object the provision of a housing and mounting arrangement which is easy to use and reduces the amount of labor for the interconnection of cables providing distribution in a building structure. Still a further object is to provide a low cost solution to the termination and distribution of cable which can readily fit within the wall of a building structure.